


What Doesn't Kill You (Changes You Forever)

by The_Last_Kenobi



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: AU, Fem Obi-Wan - Freeform, Female Obi-Wan Kenobi, Gen, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Not A Fix-It, dark themes, i don't know where this came from
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:54:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26787802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Last_Kenobi/pseuds/The_Last_Kenobi
Summary: 10 moments in the life of an Obi-Wan Kenobi who was born female, and whose first encounter with the Sith goes more than a little sideways.
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi & Darth Maul, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Jedi Council, Qui-Gon Jinn & Obi-Wan Kenobi
Comments: 19
Kudos: 167





	What Doesn't Kill You (Changes You Forever)

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know, man. This one clobbered me when I was tired, and here we are.

_**1.** _

She can see that he still doesn’t want her.

It’s obvious.

In the lines of his face, the stiffness of his movements, the rigidity in the Force—he still doesn’t want her, even though the Force is almost crying out in favor of them, even though they share a blossoming Force-bond.

Qui-Gon Jinn radiates ice and disdain and he won’t let her in, even as he brushes his strong, callused fingers through her shoulder-length hair, all matted and tangled from her fight with the Hutts and brief brush with death.

Obi-Wan looks at him and wonders if she looks small. Weak.

It’s always been a problem for her—

Being small, female, slender and slight and also so certain of her place in life.

Nobody has ever seemed to like that.

And now she’s here in this tiny little bunk on a worn-out ship, and she feels heavy and weightless at the same time, but still fiercely determined to do what she had been doing when she got hurt: the right thing.

And Qui-Gon Jinn is telling her that she can’t, because he doesn’t want her.

So when he finishes braiding her hair and checking her bandages and just stalks out of the room, Obi-Wan doesn’t say anything.

She blinks stinging eyes and leans back into the bed, trying to sink herself into it and secure herself to something as her entire future and everything she has ever believed lets go of _her_.

_**2.** _

The Temple feels closed off.

It’s as open and airy and full of light as ever, but still every inch of it seems to radiate not for you, not yours, do not touch.

She’s thirteen years old and she’s on probation because she stayed behind on a planet where the adults were trying to murder each other and their own children, because Qui-Gon had told her it was a choice between staying to help and being a Jedi…

…and she had believed him.

The Force had screamed at her to stay.

Her instincts told her to stay.

Her heart begged her to stay.

And Qui-Gon was always telling her to listen to all three of those things, and yet when she _had_ , he had drawn a line in the sand and told her to surrender her lightsaber.

His ship had flown away leaving her in dust and ashes, with only other children around to support her, all of them targets in a planet-wide slaughter—he left her, alone, expelled from the Order, and weaponless.

Qui-Gon came back for her eventually, but only at the utmost end of need and at Yoda’s behest, and the Council sided with the Master and now she is a Padawan on probation.

Nobody seems to want to talk to her.

They talk about her, around her, hands cupped over their mouths in a crude imitation of respect and privacy, but she can hear them. They're _right there_. Traitor, coward, weakling, they say. Unwanted, foisted on her Master by Yoda, not strong enough, too soft.

Even the walls don’t want her.

_**3.** _

Dooku watches her duel for less than a minute and calls a halt to the exercise.

Obi-Wan halts, blue lightsaber humming, and waits in her frozen position for his judgement.

It isn’t what she expects.

“Soresu,” he says flatly.

“Master Dooku?” the fifteen-year-old questions her grandmaster, completely thrown. He’s watching her with his arms folded, and it’s the same imperious stance as Qui-Gon has when he critiques her saberwork—drawn up tall, chin tucked a little to look her up and down, head to the side, one arm on his hip and the other at his side.

But his dark eyes, while cold, are calculating.

He’s not disappointed.

He’s thinking.

“Soresu,” he says again. “By all means, keep up with your Ataru, but I would suggest at least dual-mastering in Soresu. You’re _built_ for endurance, for the smooth and constant movements. It would suit you far better, I think.”

And with that, he sweeps out of the room.

Obi-Wan relaxes into a resting position, studying the hilt of her saber in her hand, silver and black and glistening with sweat from sparring.

Six weeks later, she catches a glimpse of Master Dooku as she spars with Master Giiett, both of them using Soresu, moving slowly as the Master teaches the Padawan.

Dooku’s smile is brief, but real, and approving, and Obi-Wan feels her faith in herself—in her interpretation of her future and what the Force intends for her—strengthen just a little.

_**4.** _

The man _wants_ her.

But not in any way that Obi-Wan likes or desires or has even paused to consider—she’s got goosebumps up her arms and her throat feels tight as she catches glimpses of him throughout the entire evening.

Even when he isn’t looking at her, she can sense his desire to through the Force.

Qui-Gon seems to notice too, but it doesn’t seem as striking to him—when her Master senses her unease through their bond, he sends her reassurance and calm in return, and as they catch one another briefly in the enormous room of mingling politicians, he stops long enough to touch her shoulder comfortingly and murmur, “He won’t do anything. He wouldn’t dare. It’s a wrong and indecorous thing, Obi-Wan, but it won’t go farther than that.”

How does he know that?

Obi-Wan wonders as she circulates through the room, chatting with the high and mighty of Coruscant, charming them all without trying and feeling nauseous the whole time, wondering what exactly it is that she is doing that is triggering the sickening feelings she can sense from the man watching her.

He flares with lust and greed and admiration at seemingly random things.

How can she _stop_ it?

If she can just make herself less noticeable to him, then she could focus.

It’s not like he’s going to try anything.

She believes that right up to the moment where the hand clamps over her mouth and another wraps vicelike against her waist, hot even through her layers of robes; right up until he wrestles and drags her writhing and fighting for a little space and some air backwards into the shadows; right up until a tall, imposing body is slamming hers back against a wall in a dark corridor—and as she goes to shove him away with the Force she feels the needle bite her skin.

Obi-Wan succeeds in throwing the man thirty feet down the hall and into a table bearing an ornamental vase, which shatters at the impact, before she stumbles backwards and drops, vision swimming.

Even as she feels Qui-Gon’s alarm through their bond and knows he is searching for her, she also knows that the angry, blurry, dark figure stalking towards her will get there sooner.

Qui-Gon is not going to make it in time, and she’s too weak to defend herself.

_**5.** _

They’re on Acadia, and they have a whole two days before their shuttle will be ready to depart—and the mission is over, thank the stars, what a mess.

Obi-Wan smiles around at her Master. “What shall we do, Master?”

“Sleep,” yawns Qui-Gon. “Sleep properly for the first time in nine days, and then, oh…I don’t know. There are islands off the coast that I hear are beautiful…rich in life, unusual flora and fauna. We’ll go there tomorrow.”

Obi-Wan smiles ruefully, because that sounds like a dream for _Qui-Gon_ and a trashbag of sunburn, sand, and unwanted proximity to flora and fauna for _her_ part.

But that’s all right.

If she indulges him for a day, he’s sure to agree to a quiet day roaming the downtown city streets the following day, stopping at cafes and bookshops and talking to people. He’ll be bored of the shops and the walking, and he's definitely going to complain, but they’ll both agree on the people.

Obi-Wan stretches her tired limbs and contemplates how at age nineteen, she has finally set her feet on the path she wants.

She has overcome doubt, darkness, terror, greed, and pain.

She has made up her mind multiple times to be a Jedi, before realizing that she must continually make that decision every second of every day—to be the best, to be her best, to live up to her Master and the Council and her own expectations.

Obi-Wan Kenobi has come so far from the angry and hurting twelve-year old.

And a swim off an island doesn’t sound so bad, really.

Qui-Gon chuckles across the room. “Go to sleep, Padawan. You’re thinking very loudly over there.”

“Well, consider it a tiny bit of payback for you snoring vey loudly over there, every night for the past six years.”

A pillow flies across the room and smacks her in the head, and they both laugh and roll over, losing themselves in their own thoughts, shielding the bond carefully as they do every night—so they can sense if the other needs help or is having a nightmare, but keeping the mundane irritations and the deep dark thoughts hidden away.

_**6.** _

Obi-Wan had known as soon as she set foot in the sand that this was the end of it.

She had been waiting for days for Qui-Gon to return from Mos Espa with a Queen’s handmaiden, a Gungan, and hopefully a new hyperdrive. He returned, but immediately left again, saying he had something else to bring—it was the boy, she knew, because he looked so in awe and so distracted.

It was like when he was thinking of Xanatos, except without the grief and pain.

She had waited hours, and then—

— _danger_.

Twenty-five years old, a Senior Padawan, an impressive duelist in Soresu and Ataru, gifted in the Unifying Force—the motions of the universe at large, the past and the future—Obi-Wan Kenobi strides down the ramp of the newly repaired ship and ignites her blazing blue lightsaber, turning her heels in the sand to learn in mere seconds the traction of the earth—

Because seconds are all she has before the nightmare is upon her.

Red and black tattoos, golden eyes burning with hatred and amusement, black robes. Unnatural speed, radiating hatred.

Dark uses of the Force.

If this isn't a Sith, Obi-Wan will eat her cloak.

But as soon as her boots had touched the sand, she had known that she would not win this fight.

Red and blue blades hummed and sang and clashed against the blinding heat and brightness of Tatooine’s desert, and her muscles burned as she ducked and wove and spun, keeping pace with her adversary.

As the lightsaber arched towards her head and a clawed hand closed unexpectedly around her throat, claws digging into her skin, Obi-Wan sighed and offered herself and her Master one last gift.

She turns her energy inwards and _rips_ their Force-given training bond right out of her mind and soul, tearing it off completely and violently, like severing a limb—

In the split second before her world goes black, she senses Qui-Gon’s rush of terror for her.

He is close, then.

But not close enough.

The dark figure was faster, and Obi-Wan was not strong enough to defend herself.

_**7.** _

The thing looks like a man.

Looks like a man, smells like a man, walks and talks and sneers like a man.

But in the Force, the thing that calls himself Sidious feels like a sentient cancer, a cunning, manipulative, murderous and cruel thing that is clinging to life and to the galaxy for the pleasure of watching it crumble.

She fights him, she kicks and screams, she recites the Jedi Code over and over, grounding herself to reality.

He stretches out a single finger and her entire body is alive with dark lightning, and were it not for some unnatural power of the Dark Side, her blood would be vaporized and her bones calcified a hundred times over by the end of their first day together.

The Sith Master tears through her shields like they’re more fragile than flower petals, storms his way into her mind, and then slows down.

Each intrusion into her mind after that is agonizingly slow, cruelly gentle, investigating every part of her, every nook and cranny, places inside her mind and heart that even she had forgotten about or overlooked or ignored. His mind fills hers up, seeping into even the darkest corners and tiniest cracks, and Sidious knows her better than she knows herself.

He laughs at her pitiful efforts against Bruck and the man in the capitol building.

He shakes his head at her pleading with the Masters, with the Healers, the Council, and Qui-Gon, to believe her, to understand her, to listen to her side of the story.

Mocks her decision to stay on Melida/Daan, to follow her Master to the edge of the Dark Side out of loyalty, to protect Qui-Gon from her impending murder—or so she had thought—despite his obvious disinterest in her now that he had found someone new.

Obi-Wan _howls_ as she finds she cannot separate herself from Sidious, cannot tell where one ends and the other begins—

—the Sith Lord withdraws at once.

_**8.** _

Obi-Wan duels Maul every day.

Sidious has declared to them that he is breaking the Rule of Two—that the ban was put in place to ensure the survival of the Sith, and now that their victory is so close, why bother? Why not flourish, instead?

Obi-Wan is not a Sith, but it is nice to know that she doesn’t have to kill Maul because Maul has to kill her, because they are not rivals.

Maul doesn’t trust that.

He attacks unexpectedly.

From around corners, dropping down from the ceiling, hiding in the shadows, pouncing on her bed as she sleeps.

Obi-Wan gets better and better at sensing his approach, and never once does he land a hit by surprise.

They only ever land hits in the middle of the duels, never at the beginning, somehow.

Her form is evolving, and she knows it.

It’s not Soresu, anymore, although it is largely drawn from that, based on it— _today_ , as she clashes with Darth Maul through the halls of the dark palace, she feels the barely restrained fury of Vaapad, the elegant precision of Makashi, the unexpectedness of Ataru, and something else all her own. Thrumming through her veins.

Her saber is blue and brilliant against Maul’s furious red.

But today, after, when they set aside the sabers and stand there panting for breath and smiling-snarling at one another, they have matching sets of golden eyes.

It turns out, not so surprisingly, in the end—

Unlike the Jedi Order, one does not need to swear fealty to a code or creed to be Fallen to the Dark Side.

All it takes is the decision to lean on your emotions instead of out of them, to give in to the temptations of impatience and anger and personal strength.

Obi-Wan has a lot of personal strength to tap into, these days.

_**9.** _

She keels before the Sith Master when he asks her to swear fealty.

And she says, “No, thanks.”

His hand stretches out towards her, a serpent, a claw, a spear—but even though she feels a frisson of fear creep up her spine, she keeps her head held high and her eyes open, and so Obi-Wan Kenobi watches as the pale hand comes up and up and then…rests on top of her long, loose, copper-gold hair.

“ _Explain_ ,” Sidious hisses.

“Lord Sidious,” she says quietly, “I don’t want to be a Sith. I don’t want to be a Jedi. I think you know that I’m only interested in being me.”

The hand begins to card gently through her hair, soft, not tearing through the gentle waves and soft coils she had discovered her hair possessed when allowed to grow out past her shoulders. His chilled fingers soothe her hair but never brush against her skin.

“And if I tell you that you are a Sith, that you belong with me, with us?”

His voice is colder than empty space.

But he is merely testing her, and she knows this.

He has trained and guided her for six years now.

Sidious has tortured her with lightning, invaded her every thought and feeling, kept her in the dark, denied her food and water, thrown her into perilous environments, allowed his other apprentice to attack her at will.

But he has never forced her to do anything, not once.

He desires absolute _conviction_.

And nothing less.

It is _this_ standard that took her so long to understand, much less achieve. Independence of thought and action, freedom from a rigid code, the ability to suffer consequences and enjoy triumphs entirely on her own if she wished…

Obi-Wan smiles. “My Lord, I am your ally and your ever-grateful student. I don’t wish to be a part of anything larger than the circles I make. May my own circle ever be linked with yours, if you wish.”

The Dark Lord of the Sith smiles back.

_**10.** _

She comes to him as he walks up the steps of what used to be the Jedi Temple.

Already the media is flocking, eagerly absorbing the false tale of impending betrayal by the Jedi, the justified strike the military made to prevent it, and the horror of the Jedi executing their own young to prevent their arrest by the benevolent government.

Already the fires are being put out, the Senate is crumbling willingly at his feet, their beloved Chancellor.

She is wrapped in dark blue tunics and leggings and a sweeping black cloak that reminds her somewhat of her beloved former grandmaster, happily retired on Serenno with his Countship and an entire five-hundred star systems that Sidious has given him to govern—under Sidious’ eyes, of course.

The Sith raises an eyebrow at the striking attire, and Obi-Wan shrugs gracefully, her copper-gold locks now hanging past her waist, completely loose and slightly tangled from the winds.

“They bring out my eyes and make my hair shine, what can I say?” she says by way of greeting.

He laughs. “They do indeed, dear one. Come.” The first sentence is warm, benevolent; the second is coarse and cold as ice.

It hardly matters. Both sides of Sidious are equally real, equally dangerous, and both have her unswerving loyalty and friendship.

It helps that he returns the friendship, no matter his mood.

They sweep into the blackened and desecrated Temple, where Maul leans idly on a pillar and surveys the two dozen or so surviving Jedi. Mostly Masters, a few Knights and Padawans. Most of the Council has been eradicated, but Obi-Wan spots Plo Koon leaning against a Twi’lek for support, and the poor old dear is missing both arms below the elbows but he’s still got that strength to him.

Good.

He’ll make it, then.

“Obi-Wan?”

Aha. And there he is, of _course_ he is, tenacious and bullheaded and bewildered to the last. Qui-Gon Jinn stands next to his young former Padawan Anakin Skywalker.

"I thought you were dead," Jinn says in anguish, confusion. "I thought...you died...I felt it. You were destroyed!"

Skywalker looks at her with sudden shock, and then _immediate_ rage and hatred and condescension, and in his eyes and face and ridiculously open body language she can practically hear the inner thoughts _Obi-Wan, Obi-Wan Kenobi, but she died, but look at her, look at those eyes, she’s a liar and a Sith, I always knew I was better than the ghost of Qui-Gon’s former apprentice—_

Anakin Skywalker falls dead the instant he draws his saber against her.

Obi-Wan disengages her still-blue saber and hangs it on her belt again in the moment it takes to blink.

Qui-Gon’s face is contorted with shock and horror; his eyes seek hers and find them. “Obi-Wan, _why?_ ” he begs. “What are you doing? What has he done to you?”

Obi-Wan picks her way past Skywalker’s corpse and steps right into Qui-Gon Jinn’s personal space, smiling up at him with those huge, blue-green-grey- _molten gold_ eyes of hers, the constellation freckles moving as she smiles and smiles. “I did it on my own,” she tells him.

Her saber is back in her hand again and through his abdomen before he can reply.

As he falls to his knees and then to his side, dying slowly, she adds, “That’s all he wanted in the first place. It turns out that not even being a Sith _has_ to prevent you from being a decent fucking person. What was your excuse, Jedi?”


End file.
